The Kaiju Preservation Society

I have a stack of books I want to bring to Transmissions - to share the best bits of my voracious reading habit. I had a few jockeying for a spot in this post. But this book by John Scalzi just jumped to the top of the "Too-Excited-To-Not-Share-With-Everyone" list.

The Kaiju Preservation Society is the definition of summer reading. But for geeks. Light, breezy, action-packed, and much too quick. I was halfway through this book and already knew there wasn't enough book here for me.

Scalzi has packed this book full of likable (and some severely unlikeable) characters. Despite the extremes of the situations Jamie Gray and her cohorts find themselves in, you still want to hang out with these fictional geeks.

If you like Godzilla/Pacific Rim-style movies with healthy doses of cryptozoology and sarcasm, this book is for you.

Go read it already.

LEGO Star Wars Death Star Trench Run

Greebling: The act of adding small parts to a surface to create visual interest.

An action you'll be doing a lot of for this set. Get excited, because I discovered it to be thoroughly enjoyable.

I loved how different this set was from the rest of LEGO's offerings lately. It felt like they took the idea of Star Wars and filtered it through their Architecture line. And I am here for it. While the other diorama sets released along with this set are scaled to minifigs and are nice and all, this miniature scale had me super-intrigued.

With good reason - I loved all the greebling so much that I decided to go-a-hunting through my lego collection for any uniquely-shaped, gray LEGO pieces I could lay my hands on. Then I extended the set by about 30% in width.

This was a blast of a build, with some unique building opportunities. Get your hands on this one. It's the perfect display item for your collection.

OK LEGO, bring on more greebling!

Andrew Bird: Atomized

I've been listening to Andrew Bird long enough that I was introduced to his music via a mix CD a friend gave me. I can't remember the song, but I do know I immediately went looking for more of his music.

I could highlight any number of his, but he just dropped a new album, so let's go with one of his newest tracks: Atomized.

I've spent a lot of time trying to classify his music while working on this issue of Transmissions. I think you'd end up using some pretentious-sounding category with too many hyphens and/or slashes. Or you could just call it unique and wonderful.

Fun Fact about Mr. Bird: He performed Walter's solo, The Whistling Caruso, in 2011's The Muppets.

There's so much more to come. If you have anything that you think would be fun to cover in Transmissions, send ideas my way.

Michael Morris
Founder and Chief Creative